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The Obama administration is sending a clear message to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government: Destroy the two-state solution all you want. But be polite about it.

Peter, you confuse me. You tell us that the Obama administration is frustrated – chickenshitedly so – with Bibi because he doesn’t want to enact the two-state solution. And now Obama doesn’t care if dreams of a Palestinian state go down the drain, as long as they swirl politely. What gives?

In a snub widely reported in the Israeli (though not the American) press, the administration refused Israeli Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon’s requests to meet with Joe Biden, John Kerry and Susan Rice. Several accounts cited the White House’s anger at Ya’alon for having called Kerry “messianic and obsessive” and for having derided Obama’s foreign policy as weak. My colleague Chemi Shalev reported that administration officials were also peeved at Ya’alon for having rejected some of the security arrangements Kerry floated in peace talks earlier this year. Then an unnamed senior administration official told Jeffrey Goldberg that Ya’alon’s boss, Benjamin Netanyahu, was “chickenshit.”

Aha! I think I figured out the root cause of Chickenshitgate! We are all calling each other names! Now, admittedly it would appear that Bogie started it. But I bet Bogie would accuse the U.S. officials of having started it.

In snubbing Ya’alon and bashing Bibi, the White House may have been trying to signal that there are consequences to defying the United States. But the real message, as received by Israel’s leaders, has been more like: Defy us more courteously. Despite these rebukes, Netanyahu this week moved ahead with plans to build more than a thousand housing units in East Jerusalem, including in Har Homa, which particularly infuriates Palestinians because it didn’t even become a Jewish neighborhood until Netanyahu created it in 1997 . Bibi did so even though East Jerusalem is already so tense that some are warning of a third intifada. But he did so politely, taking care not to personally insult American officials along the way. And thus, he struck another blow against Palestinian statehood while garnering nothing more than a mild reproach from a State Department spokeswoman. It was a lesson to his less artful defense minister: This is how you play the game.

Sigh. For the millionth time. Official Israeli policy is and always has been that all of Jerusalem is sovereign Israeli territory. There is no reason for Israel not to build there. Certainly threats of mob violence should not prove a deterrent, or Peter would be proving every bully who terrorized him in middle school correct. And should Har Homa become part of a Palestinian state, why can’t Jews live in a Palestinian state?

If the Obama White House wants to change that game, it should stop wasting time dissing Ya’alon and do something that actually gets Israel’s attention: Support Mahmoud Abbas’ effort to set a timeline for Palestinian statehood at the UN. According to recent reports, the White House has not only vowed to veto such a resolution, it has tried pressured Arab countries to make the Palestinians shelve it. If they don’t, the Palestinians fear the U.S. may even delay aid for the reconstruction of Gaza.

All this because Abbas is doing what everyone always tells the Palestinians to do. Unlike Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which insist that Israel only understands force, he’s acting nonviolently. Unlike many younger Palestinians, who have abandoned the two-state solution, he’s still struggling to achieve it.

American diplomats justify their opposition to Abbas’ UN gambit by claiming it represents an end run around peace talks. Nonsense. It’s an effort to make those peace talks real. Netanyahu, after all, has still not publicly committed to a Palestinian state near the 1967 lines. He’s still not put forward a map of where the borders of a Palestinian state might be. He’s rubbished the idea that Israeli troops would ever leave the West Bank. And the Obama administration’s own officials have said he bears the bulk of the blame for the collapse of peace talks earlier this year.

There may be another reason US officials are skittish about our friend and dictator Abbas. He is currently sitting in a unity government with Hamas. Remember them? Recognized terrorist organization? So much for Abbas’ non-violence.

On another note: I don’t get you, Peter. Does the Obama administration want a two-state solution or not? At times you say Obama is deeply frustrated over Bibi stubbornness, yet now you say Obama officials really don’t give a damn. Which one is it?

Abbas is not trying to avoid a negotiated deal. Two of the Israelis who know him best, Ehud Olmert and Shimon Peres have both testified to his desire for one. What he’s seeking is some way to force the hand of an Israeli government that, if left to its own devices, will bury the two-state solution for good.

Um, I don’t think people take either of those guys’ political views seriously anymore. The latter is passé at best and the former is, well, let’s just say I’d rather have him against me than with me at this point.

What matters in the U.S.-Israel relationship isn’t America’s ability to feel respected as a superpower. It’s Israel’s ability to survive as a democratic Jewish state by ending its immoral, self-destructive occupation of millions of stateless human beings. Snubbing Boogie and insulting Bibi don’t promote that. Helping Mahmoud Abbas just might.

Tell you the truth, Peter, Israel isn’t too keen on the occupation either. But you put way too much confidence in Abbas than his record would indicate. Just a quick review: he wrote a dissertation in which he accused the Zionists of colluding with the Nazis; his Fatah party lost the election to Hamas, indicating that he does not have the popular support you wish he had; he has governed the PA for nearly ten years without an election, effectively turning him into a dictator; he governs a political system rife with ineptitude and corruption; he governs a society which heroizes suicide bombers and terrorists, and educates children in the destruction of Israel; he rules a society in which freedom of sexual orientation, religion, press, speech, and so much more is severely limited. And in case you forget, he governs in conjuction with the most popular political party in the PA, Hamas!

And this is the man you want the U.S. to help, contrary to Israel’s wishes?

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